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| Re: PHOTOS: Jon's Juice Junket, part 5 - Austin (935244) | |||
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Re: PHOTOS: Jon's Juice Junket, part 5 - Austin |
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Posted by Jon Bell on Tue May 18 22:51:44 2010, in response to PHOTOS: Jon's Juice Junket, part 1 - New Orleans, posted by Jon Bell on Sun May 16 00:21:04 2010. This turned out to be a long day.Austin MetroRail's schedule is mostly inbound in the morning and outbound in the afternoon, six trips apiece in the primary direction. There are fewer reverse-direction trips, and only one apiece in AM and PM goes the whole length of the route. Furthermore, a complete round trip from Leander to downtown and back fills up most of the morning or afternoon operating period, leaving little or no time for chasing around taking pictures along the line. So, I got up early this morning to catch the 5:25 from Leander, the first trip into town. It arrives downtown at 6:27, then leaves again at 6:41, finally returning to Leander at 7:43. The inbound trip was mostly in complete darkness:  I should have remembered to take my MacBook along, because the trains have free wi-fi. Twilight arrived just before we arrived downtown, and I could actually see where we were going during the outbound trip.  When we got back to Leander the sun was well above the horizon but partly obscured by thin clouds.  This ended the morning's activities, because there were still only a couple of other trains en route downtown, and there was no way I could have caught them. So I went back to the motel, posted the Houston pictures, ate an early lunch and took a nap. Chasing the afternoon's trains was fairly successful. I drove all the way downtown, then back out to Leander. I think I passed by all the stations, but I passed some of them by because the lighting was wrong and there were no mitigating factors to override that. Here's the Downtown station again in daylight. When I first saw this, I did a double take because the stations can't handle two-car trains! Then I looked more closely and saw that they weren't coupled together. The 4:55 train was waiting behind the 4:20 train.  Most stations have a single platform and a single track. Two stations have two tracks: MLK, Jr. (with a single center platform) and Kramer (with two side platforms). These are the stations where inbound and outbound trains regularly meet. Here's a meet at Kramer, followed by the departure of the northbound train:   Kramer puzzles me. It's rather far out from downtown. The biggest possible traffic generator nearby is a UT research campus, but it's a bit of a hike. Otherwise there's only typical suburban light industry, and a small shopping center about a quarter mile away. No residential development nearby, as far as I could see. One bus route runs past the station. Yet there's no parking! I parked at the shopping center and walked back to the station, just in time to get the pictures. I did see some people waiting for the trains. Finally, here's a scene along the final stretch towards the end of the line at Leander, which runs right alongside US 183 (Bell Blvd.!). Doesn't this remind you of the old-time side-of-the-road interurbans? :-)  |
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